Fuck You Internet Explorer

This is for you IE

Be Warned: This post has very little technical value, more just a rant against my most hated enemy

I hate Internet Explorer, with a fiery passion. Normally I just code along in beautiful browsers and use cross browser CSS and JavaScript frameworks. It’s gotten to the point that I can code something up in Firefox and make it pretty and go over to old IE-saurus Rex and load it up and it looks 90% of the way there and a few hacks later it’s fine. You see I still hate IE, but I’ve ingrained in my brain somewhere what things are “safe” and will probably work in that POS browser and which will require hours of tweaking, reading, googling, hacking, gnashing of teeth, and general misery. I try to avoid the latter.

So If I’ve developed this system to insulate myself from the misery of IE, why the hate today? IE9, that’s why. I’ve read several reviews both positive and negative, but at the end of the day I’m not switching browsers, so I really care about one thing and one thing only, does IE9 make my job as a web developer better or worse. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s worse, and for that I have a lovely pile of “Fuck You” cake sitting right here with IE’s name on it.

Not Available for Windows XP

First of all, IE9 is not available for Windows XP. Great, game over right there you fucking idiots. I don’t think people should use 10 year old operating systems, but people are stupid, see: the continued popularity of American Idol for proof. Firefox is taking the responsible route and helping these poor souls bring their browser into the 21st century even if they are fine with an ancient OS. As Firefox Engineering Director Johnathan Nightingale says about XP, “…the best metrics that we’ve got say 40 to 50 percent of the web is still on XP. That’s too big for us to just leave them behind”

Missing a metric ton of shit

IE9 is just missing a ton of stuff. Stuff that web developers care about, stuff that would make our lives easier and happier, stuff that IE9 rapes right before sleeping soundly on a pile of skulls. Paul Rouget of Mozilla makes this case, let me quote some of the juicier parts.

Suck it UX

Hoping you might get HTML5 History API, Drag’n Drop from Desktop, or Web Workers to speed up your applications. Not with IE9 you won’t.

Not the point though

Let’s not get caught up in a feature list shoot out though, because that’s not the point. Let’s move onto the next subject.

Fractured even further

Does IE9 make my job easier, nope not at all. Microsoft’s all consuming obsession with backwards compatibility means that they won’t force anyone to upgrade. While other major browsers are moving to a model of strongly-recommended / automatic background updates to keep everyone on the latest and greatest, Microsoft is still playing the game by the old rules. Now the browser landscaped is fractured even further, I have to make sure my code works in IE6, IE7, IE8, and IE9, and if I want to be really sure I should also check in IE7-compatibility, IE8-compatibility, and Quirks Mode. Microsoft has never made it easy to run different IE versions side by side, I’ve used several products to do this and they all work to varying degrees. Now I will have to run another different virtual machine with either Vista or Win7 so I can test in IE9. And with no / terrible developer tools for all of these browsers, well its a fucking nightmare.

Conclusion

I wish I had one. At this point the only thing I’ve concluded is Fuck You Very Much Internet Explorer. Here’s an idea, stop already Microsoft. I don’t care how good you make IE10, the fact of the matter is that since you won’t force upgrades, it isn’t fucking helping. The only thing you are doing is making more work for the people that actually make the web beautiful. I fucking hate you. Fuck you very much.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 6:04 pm and is filed under rant.
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16 comments

Quite possible that I may have to unsubscribe from your RSS feed now, thanks for that. Can’t obscure that word a little? F%$* or some such? Nine times in one post? I’ll probably show up on a filter report at work now.

I don’t see the point of censoring myself, as though someone wouldn’t be able to see past my cunning and realize that F%$* means Fuck. It is the concept that is offensive not the juxtaposition of letters. I did not intend to get anyone in trouble for my writing and if you suffer some ill-consequence because of it you have my apologies.

I design for Firefox/Webkit etc, and if it works in IE great (most stuff I work on looks ok in IE8). Before I specialize sites for IE I think of mobile css (been seeing issues with font sizes and page heights). If you need to support everyone you invariably get hosed. Browser market fragmentation will have to gravitate around the standards for mutual benefits or it’ll continue to diverge (would be interesting).

Give windows a few more years, many users will migrate to alternative OS and default browsers. I’m seeing signs of life for Apple in enterprise (uphill), linux and bsd have made incredible inroads but still have limited consumer desktop adoption.

I agree with most of these points, except the paragraph under “Fractured even further”. You said: “Microsoft’s all consuming obsession with backwards compatibility means that they won’t force anyone to upgrade.”

Well, no other major browsers forcibly make you upgrade – in other words, stop you using an older version of the browser unless you upgrade it to the latest version. That would just be plain bad practice.

“While other major browsers are moving to a model of strongly-recommended / automatic background updates to keep everyone on the latest and greatest, Microsoft is still playing the game by the old rules.”

So all in all, Internet Explorer 9 at the very least is going to be listed in Windows Update as an ‘Important’ or ‘Recommended’ update. Most users have their settings on Windows Update set so that it will automatically check for, download and install updates in the background without the user being aware. The next time the user restarts their previous version of Internet Explorer will be replaced by version 9.

—

“I have to make sure my code works in IE6, IE7, IE8, and IE9, and if I want to be really sure I should also check in IE7-compatibility, IE8-compatibility, and Quirks Mode. Microsoft has never made it easy to run different IE versions side by side, I’ve used several products to do this and they all work to varying degrees. Now I will have to run another different virtual machine with either Vista or Win7 so I can test in IE9. And with no / terrible developer tools for all of these browsers, well its a fucking nightmare.”

Please tell me if I’m mistaken here, but instead of having to install tonnes of virtual machines or get multiple versions of Internet Explorer to run side-by-side isn’t it much, much easier to use a website like http://www.browsershots.org/ ? Last time I checked, they didn’t have support for Internet Explorer 9. They do, however, include a crapload of other browsers you probably don’t even need. Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 are included and you can deselect any browsers that you don’t want to test in. It’s completely free, too.

About testing in IE6: I honestly recommend you just forget about it. Even Microsoft themselves are encouraging users to upgrade (see this site: http://www.ie6countdown.com/), so you can pretty much forget about it. If you really need to, then the aforementioned browsershots.org website is readily available.

Well, that pretty much sums up all I wanted to say. Look forward to your reply.

Chrome silently updates in the background, although they are not going to stop you if you use an older version, for most users they will just keep updating right along and never know it. Safari updates as an OS level update and OSX bugs me every few days if I say “Not Now” to update the browser. Firefox will pop up a little bar reminding me to update and makes the upgrade path seamless and simple. Fire up IE6 and nothing, no “Hey you are using a 10 year old browser, bad monkey!” not even a “Hey we have a new browser that will make your life easier.” The sad thing is that for a lot of people, whatever browser comes installed on their computer, that will be the browser they use until that computer stops functioning.

BrowserShots is nice if you want to see if a layout looks ok and don’t mind waiting up to a few hours for all the shots to come back. If you want to test interactive functionality, when I click this button in IE6 and it fires this javascript to fold down this div, does everything look ok? You need to have actual running browsers to test those kinds of complex things.

I would absolutely love to forget about IE6, sadly I don’t get to make those kinds of calls so I will keep coding for it. At least I’ve been able to convince management that “functionality” is the only requirement for IE6.

“I don’t think people should use 10 year old operating systems, but people are stupid, see: the continued popularity of American Idol for proof. Firefox is taking the responsible route and helping these poor souls bring their browser into the 21st century even if they are fine with an ancient OS.”

The language isn’t a problem, it’s your ridiculous notion that all things are equal everywhere. The whole world doesn’t upgrade just because M$ demands it, and there are significant percentages of people on our planet without the means to keep buying hardware to run the latest OS from MS. They are not dumb idiots, they are not numpties. XPSP3 is an incredibly stable OS, it works. The fact that it comes with IE6 is neither here nor there for a lot of users because Firefox, Chrome et al have been available for a while. I coded sites for years, and I also loathe and detest IE with a passion, but just leave the sodding XP users alone, age doesn’t make something useless you narrow minded git.

I installed IE 9 two days ago. First off, let me say that it’s GARBAGE compared to IE 8. They literally *Downgraded* the system to a piece of crap that you can barely manuver on, and that’s the least of my woes. I can no longer search out items in the address bar using google… Well, I mean, the search box is gone. GONE. I have to type everything into the address bar, even then, it’s crap. I typed in http://www.IMFDB.com and it refuses to take me to that exact site, and instead redirects me straight to IMDB… If IE 9 were a person, I’d shove my keyboard up their ass, and piss on their face when they’re trembling in pain on the ground like the balled-up whore that they are.

i was dumb enough to click on upgrade to ie9 couple days ago and now i can’t play flash games properly, what the hell is wrong with u microsoft? upgrade to something that i can’t even use? worry not, firefox is keeping me entertained…..

I “upgraded to IE9….and after 20 minutes promptly rolled back to IE8. I hate “bing” with a passion, but its obnoxious and odious presence seemed to be the sole reason that IE9 even exists. Decision engine my ass…that’s like saying an airline hijacker is a “destination engineer”.

All I want to do is surf the web for random nonsense, play games, and send/receive email. Bing and its apsberger/OCD/thieving nature makes this impossible. I’m not a huge techie, but I do know a big steaming heap of shit when it is dumped in my yard, and IE9 is the dog responsible.

IE 9 — Press F12 Gives you a backwards compatibility mode, and debug.. Which is quite useful. I would point out that,

I’m getting old and, and I really don’t like wasting my time on simple things. How can you charge by the hour when it takes you 4 hours to get a piece of text to line up properly across a few browsers. It makes you feel just dam stupid. Works fine in firefox, then you take ages tweaking and pushing to get it to work in other ways..

But a lot simpler would be :-

In IE have a firefox implementation DOCTYPE, and likewise in Firefox why don’t they have a DOCTYPE that specifies IE implementation. Then we can just concentrate on one style, whichever is best for the website you are designing. That way you can code for the advantages of ONE model at a time, instead of hacking stuff together.

Thank you for letting me vent: I hate these motha fing, scum bag, pieces of crap, stupid idiot pussy, garbage eating, soul-less, cowardly, irresponsible, loser, chumps, or should I say chimps, who probably can not even find their arse in the dark. I hope they all die really soon, or better yet they are all in one place where I can beat the living sheet out of them, then cut their wing wangs off, opps they don’t have those. Everyone involved with IE, you are cursed, forever. Be careful who you to talk to, we are all looking to get your sorry arses. The planet wants some get back, you filthy pieces of garbage. Microsoft is the anti-christ.